Grief Pain Treatment with EMO

Margarita Foley Writes:Some practitioners of ‘traditional’ psychotherapies have difficulty with the idea of energy and energy movement. Of course it is understandable if the training is around talking and finding catharsis through reliving past events that a therapist could find a problem integrating energy therapy. There seems to be a fear that the dynamic of the counselling or the therapy will be disrupted or changed in some way. I have experienced this fear when doing bereavement counselling as part of an organisation. What if I disrupt the flow of the therapy? Oh!!

On the other hand my intuition and experience and common sense tell me that if a client is experiencing the deep pain of grief and they can point to it in their body I am selling them short by just sitting there being empathetic. I normally go with the flow of the organisation but it got too much for me and I asked the client to show me where the pain was. Pointing to her chest she said, “It is in my heart, but it is constantly in my stomach”. I explained that while moving the energy would bring relief it would not make her forget the person for whom she was grieving. So she softened with her hand and found the energy coming out her mouth (and she knew nothing about Emotrance). She was smiling broadly and when I asked her why she was smiling.

She said, “I can just see …….saying, “Ah, get it together”. In that moment I knew there had been a shift. That was her way of being able to look at the situation in a new way.

She continued to smile and did not seem to be aware of the effect of moving the energy. I feel very encouraged by this, as I personally feel that softening and flowing the energy of the emotions forms a natural part of the process.

It seems cruel to prolong someone’s agony apparently unnecessarily when we have such effective and natural healing ways that need not disrupt the flow of the counselling or therapy. If anything releasing the blocked energy can bring the person to a new and deeper understanding of their own process.

I am looking forward to the time when the energy therapies can be integrated naturally with other forms of counselling and therapy.